Real Time Systems were better in the past

Programming Algol 60 on punch cards convinced Hans Zuidam that, while a career as a radio operator in the merchant marine could be nice, computers are more fun. This has largely proven to be to true. Originally studying electrical engineering and switching to technical computing soon afterwards has proved fortuitous.

After working at the Electronics Department of the TU/e at Philips I&E (doing real-time OSes on M68k systems) and Philips Research (early touch screens), he tried his hand at graphical user interfaces for scheduling applications for container shipping businesses.

In 1996, he joined a small company to develop software for an industrial system which was quite "avant la lettre" although we did not realize that at the time. Eight FPGA controlled CANbus controllers, Ethernet, Profibus, etc. The software was based on what we today call Open Source. A hard real-time operating system, drivers for a multitude of devices, a TCP/IP stack and so on. The development host was initially a FreeBSD system with GNU gcc as compiler, Emacs as IDE and a hacked up version of GNU gdb for debugging. Later, a Windows NT system was promoted to development host.

Since 2000 self-employed (he likes to call himself a programmer rather than a consultant or architect). As a contractor, he has worked for a large number of companies both in and around Eindhoven, as well as abroad. A major part of the work has luckily been on the boundary between hardware and software with either new silicon or new boards.

UNIX (and now Linux as Unix is erroneously called) has been a running theme throughout the years. First in 1984 on an M68010 based system running V7 (with vi luckily!) Later moving to 4BSD, SunOS, HP-UX, the *BSDs and of course Linux. Although often done wrong he is pleased to see that Linux and thus Unix is finding its way into embedded systems.